The lineup has been announced.
Opening Night Film
“Annette,” Leos Carax (also in Competition)
Competition
“Ahed’s Knee,” Nadav Lapid
“Annette,” Leos Carax
“Benedetta,” Paul Verhoeven
“Bergman Island,” Mia Hansen-Løve
“Casablanca Beats,” Nabil Ayouch
“Compartment No. 6,” Juho Kuosmanen
“Drive My Car,” Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
“Everything Went Fine,” Francois Ozon
“The French Dispatch,” Wes Anderson
“A Hero,” Asghar Farhadi
“La fracture,” Catherine Corsini
“Lingui,” Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
“Memoria,” Apichatpong Weerasethakul
“Nitram,” Justin Kurzel
“Paris, 13th District,” Jacques Audiard
“Par un Demi Clair Matin,” Bruno Dumont
“Petrov’s Flu,” Kirill Serebrennikov
“Red Rocket,” Sean Baker
“The Restless,” Joachim Lafosse
“The Story of My Wife,” Ildikó Enyedi
“Three Floors,” Nanni Moretti
“Titane,” Julia Ducournau
“The Worst Person in the World,” Joachim Trier
“Flag Day,” Sean Penn
Un Certain Regard
“After Yang,” Kogonada
“Blue Bayou,” Justin Chon
“Bonne Mère,” Hafsia Herzi
“Commitment Hasan,” Hasan Semih
“Freda,” Gessica Généus
“House Arrest” OR “Delo,” Alexey German Jr.
“The Innocents,” Eskil Vogt
“Lamb,” Valdimar Jóhansson
“Moneyboys,“ B.C Yi
“Noche de Fuego,” Tatiana Huezo
“Un Monde,” Laura Wandel
“Women Do Cry,” Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova
“La Civil,” Teodora Ana Mihai
“Unclenching the Fists,” Kira Kovalenko
“Let Their Be Morning,” Eran Kolirin
“Rehana Maryam Noor,” Abdullah Mohammad Saad
Cannes Premiere
“Evolution,” Kornel Mundruczo
“Cow,” Andrea Arnold
“Deception” OR “Tromperie,” Arnaud Desplechin
“Hold Me Tight,” Mathieu Almaric
“In Front of Your Face,” Hong Sang-soo
“Love Songs for Tough Guys,” Samuel Benchetrit
“Mothering Sunday,” Eva Husson
“Val,” Ting Poo and Leo Scott
Out of Competition
“Aline, the Voice of Love,” Valerie Lemercier
“Babi Yar. Context,” Sergei Loznitsa
“Bac Nord,” Cédric Jimenez
“Emergency Declaration,” Han Jae-Rim
“In His Lifetime” OR “De son vivant,” Emmanuelle Bercot
“Stillwater,” Tom McCarthy
“The Velvet Underground,” Todd Haynes
Special Screenings
“Black Notebooks,” Shlomi Elkabetz
“H6,” Yé Yé
“Jane by Charlotte,” Charlotte Gainsbourg
“JFK: Through the Looking Glass,” Oliver Stone
“Mariner of the Mountains,” Karim Aïnouz
“Baby Yar. Context.” Sergei Loznitsa
“The Year of the Everlasting Storm,” Jafar Panahi, Anthony Chen, Malik Vitthal, Laura Poitras, Dominga Sotomayar, David Lowery, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Midnight Screenings
“Bloody Oranges,” Jean-Christophe Meurisse
Cannes 2021 (Just speculation for now)
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Re: Cannes 2021 (Just speculation for now)
He really never stops.dws1982 wrote
Hong Sang-Soo has--surprise surprise--completed another movie after debuting one at Berlin just a few months back. He has been in competition several times, but he has also been in Un Certain Regard several times as well, so showing up in either spot would be expected.
"How's the despair?"
Re: Cannes 2021 (Just speculation for now)
Thanks for the summary. Lot's to look forward to.
Cannes 2021 (Just speculation for now)
The lineup will be announced next week, so let's speculate a little on what might show up at the delayed Cannes Film Festival. This is not comprehensive. I'm sure there are plenty of films, even big ones, that I am overlooking.
The Previous Winners
Terrence Malick shot The Way of the Wind, which deals with the life of Christ in some manner, in summer 2019, right after A Hidden Life premiered at the 2019 festival. Malick has always had fairly long post-productions, going all the way back to Days of Heaven, and A Hidden Life in particular had a post-production that went on so long that two of the best-known actors in the film died before it premiered, but he also had other things going on during that post-production period (Song to Song release, The Tree of Life extended cut) that may have distracted him, and maybe a year of lockdown allowed him to get to work and get this one edited?
Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth has reportedly been screened for festival organizers. Potential Oscar contenders at Cannes are always a little bit dicey at Cannes, because the worry is they can go and not win anything and carry with them an aura of failure. (Reportedly this was why 12 Years a Slave, which was complete in spring 2013, was held for the fall festivals in 2013.) But then again, Joel (and Ethan) Coen's No Country For Old Men blanked at Cannes and did just fine. My guess is that this will play Cannes unless the higher-ups at Apple decide to hold off until Venice/Toronto. But since Cannes is so late this year, I feel like the festivals will flow into each other a little differently this year.
Apichatpong Weeerasethakul's English-language debut, Memoria, starring Tilda Swinton, was shot in 2019, so it should be ready to go.
Nanni Moretti has completed his next film, called Three Floors, which appears to be either an anthology of three stories set in the same apartment building, or an ensemble piece. Most of his fiction features have made the competition lineup.
Jacques Audiard also has a feature in some stage of post-production, called Paris, 13th District, which is in black-and-white, and co-written with Celine Sciamma. The plot sounds a lot more like a Philippe Garrel film than Audiard, so this may be a departure of sorts for Audiard.
I've seen speculation that Jane Campion's The Power of the Dog is a possibility, which would suggest that Cannes and Netflix have settled their issues, because Netflix has worldwide rights to this. Maybe Netflix has committed to an exclusive theatrical window in France or something, or maybe the film has worked with a theatrical distributor in France? Or perhaps it is out competition only? It supposedly has a Venice spot lined up if Cannes doesn't work out.
Ruben Ostlund has a new movie, Triangle of Sadness, featuring Woody Harrelson as a the captain of a cruise ship that sinks or something. I'm guessing Ostlund has a Point to make.
I don't think any movie in my years of following Cannes has got as hostile a reception as Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo. Plenty of movies get bad receptions, but this was on a different level. It has to be one of the only movies to not be shown anywhere commercially after its Cannes premiere. It had a French distributor (a prerequisite for Cannes competition) but they never released it. Everywhere else, it either never got distribution, or the distributors have sat on it for the past two years. Reportedly, part of the reason it hasn't been shown since Cannes is because Abdellatif Kechiche wanted to recut the film, but his production company is tied up in some type of litigation (possibly related to the lead actress and how she was treated by Kechiche), but any movie that gets a reception like that is going to be DOA commercially. At any rate, the unasked-for sequel, Mektoub: Canto Duo, which I'm guessing was filmed simultaneously with the second film, is reportedly complete, although due to the ongoing litigation, it may be unable to be released right now. I suspect Cannes would give it a slot, just to show they are Above It All (they gave Intermezzo a slot after Kechiche auctioned off his Palme), but they may not be able to.
The Regulars
Less a Cannes regular than a regular of any film festival, Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch is the most high-profile serious film that has been impacted by the pandemic. There was speculation (probably unfounded) that Anderson could've pushed post-production on this in time for the 2019 Oscar season but that he wanted to hold off on a festival premiere. He had a spot for this at Cannes last year, and could've taken it to Venice or Berlin in anticipation of an Oscar push this year if he (and Searchlight) had been so inclined. (I wonder, given how this year shook out, with an every-different-direction split of awards, how it would've performed.) But they held out, no doubt anticipating a big Cannes premiere at a non-virtual festival, so there's no question that it will be in the lineup.
Arnaud Depleschin has had films at Cannes going all the way back to 1992, but two of his more recent films were sidelined out of competition and in Director's Fortnight, so it's possible his latest, an adaptation of Philip Roth's Deception doesn't make the main lineup
Park Chan-wook has a new film, Decision to Leave, that should be ready to go. I doubt he ever has the kind of breakthrough that Bong Joon-ho experienced a few years ago, but he's always going to get a lot of notice.
I guess you can be a regular if two of your four features have played at Cannes in competition, right? Sean Penn has a movie called Flag Day, which honestly sounds like it could be a Liam Neeson January release based on the plot, but unless The Last Face really killed his reputation at Cannes, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see him in the lineup.
Asghar Farhadi has premiered his three post-A Separation films at Cannes, and has a new one called A Hero ready to go. No plot details have been released although it was filmed in Iran, and already has distribution via Amazon.
Hong Sang-Soo has--surprise surprise--completed another movie after debuting one at Berlin just a few months back. He has been in competition several times, but he has also been in Un Certain Regard several times as well, so showing up in either spot would be expected.
Leos Carax has actually not made that many movies but his last two features were in competition at Cannes so I'm guessing Annette, his Adam Driver/Marion Cotillard musical that some people are thinking is an Oscar contender (lol) is going to be there as well, as long as it's finished. (It has a July 6 release date in France, so I'm guessing it is finished.) One piece I read suggested it will be an opening night film, which is sometimes a competition film, but sometimes not.
Francois Ozon is a bit like Wes Anderson, but more prolific, in that he doesn't just do Cannes--he'll take a movie to any festival. Just two years ago he was at Berlin with By the Grace of God (his best film, in my opinion), and then just before that he was in competition at Cannes with one of those sex thrillers he tends to make every third movie. This year he has a movie called Everything Went Fine, with a pretty starry cast, that is apparently about euthanasia.
Stephane Brize's films haven't gotten much attention in the US, but he's had two films in competition in recent years, and he has a new one this year, called Another World, although IMDb doesn't even have a listing for it yet.
The Not-Quite Regulars, but Some of Them Will Probably Be There
Paul Verhoeven has only had two movies in competition at Cannes, but he's become a pet favorite of the auteurist crowd lately, and the backlash that he's probably going to get about his behavior towards Sharon Stone on Basic Instinct (not exactly a secret, but attitudes have shifted) will probably not matter in a world where Roman Polanski still gets (or until 2019, got) major competition berths at any film festival he submits his films to, so I would expect to see Benedetta in the lineup.
Xavier Giannoli has a de Balzac adaptation, Lost Innocents completed, although its French release date might suggest a Venice, rather than Cannes, debut.
Hard to call Ari Folman a regular with only two previous films (I honestly forgot he directed The Congress), but Waltz With Bashir made a splash in 2008, and he's got Where Is Anne Frank?, which is expected to be at this year's festival. It's the first film made with the cooperation of the Anne Frank Foundation, which gave Folman exclusive access that other filmmakers telling this story didn't have. It's takes on a unique perspective: That of Kitty, who Anne's diary is addressed to, who wakes up in modern Amsterdam and embarks on a journey to find Anne, who she believes is still alive.
Alain Guiraudie has only had one film in competition, Staying Vertical, but word was Stranger By the Lake was pushed out of competition at the last minute (some claimed this was because the explicit sex would offend Spielberg, but I never bought that). At any rate his new film (reportedly a comedy) is expected to be at Cannes.
There is often a Russian film in competition, and Kirill Serebrennikov's film, Petrov's Flu is widely expected to be the one. Lots of people seem to be expecting Julie Ducournau's film Titane, which already has a distribution deal in the US with Neon, to be in the competition as well, which would be a jump for her, after [I}Raw[/I] was in a sidebar a few years ago.
Others
When you win the top prize at another big festival, you tend to get on the Cannes radar, so Nadav Lapid, who just won Berlin a couple of years back with Synonyms (I hated that movie) will probably have a good shot at making his first competition lineup at Cannes with his follow-up, Ahed's Knee.
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi made the acclaimed five-hour Happy Hour a few years back and was in competition with Asako I & II a year or two after that, and is widely expected to have a competition spot with his next film, Drive My Car.
Emanuelle Bercot has never actually directed a film that has played in competition, although she has written one that played in competition, and has starred in several competition films (and won Best Actress not that long ago). This year she has a new film, De Son Vivant, starring Benoit Magimel, Catherine Deneuve, and Cecile de France, that I would expect to see in competition.
Mia Hansen-Love has never been in competition at Cannes but I suspect there will be a conscious effort to include more female directors so I wouldn't surprised to see her show up with Bergman Island, her English-language debut, which feels like it has been coming soon forever, probably because half of the movie was shot in 2018 and the other half was shot in 2019, and then the pandemic most likely pushed its premiere back. It was reportedly submitted for Venice last year and not accepted, though.
It seems unclear whether or not Paul Thomas Anderson's Soggy Bottom (which may undergo a name change) will be finished in time for Cannes, although the festival organizers reportedly would like to have it, and Anderson reportedly is willing to try to finish editing in time. But with a late fall release date, the distributor probably has a fall festival in mind. (Remember Phantom Thread skipped festivals altogether.)
Paul Schrader has actually been in competition twice, both in the 80's, and could be again with The Card Counter, which is almost surely finished. The release date (mid September) could be more in line with a Venice/Toronto premiere, and doesn't exactly inspire confidence, since that is a dumping ground, but this will get him more benefit of the doubt than anything he's done in quite awhile.
The Green Knight has been completed forever and has its international release a few weeks after Cannes. I would expect an out-of-competition screening, if it shows up at all.
Whether they're finished or not, I wouldn't expect Blonde, The Hand of God (Paolo Sorrentino's next film) or Apollo 10 1/2 to show up in competition since they are all Netflix films.
The Previous Winners
Terrence Malick shot The Way of the Wind, which deals with the life of Christ in some manner, in summer 2019, right after A Hidden Life premiered at the 2019 festival. Malick has always had fairly long post-productions, going all the way back to Days of Heaven, and A Hidden Life in particular had a post-production that went on so long that two of the best-known actors in the film died before it premiered, but he also had other things going on during that post-production period (Song to Song release, The Tree of Life extended cut) that may have distracted him, and maybe a year of lockdown allowed him to get to work and get this one edited?
Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth has reportedly been screened for festival organizers. Potential Oscar contenders at Cannes are always a little bit dicey at Cannes, because the worry is they can go and not win anything and carry with them an aura of failure. (Reportedly this was why 12 Years a Slave, which was complete in spring 2013, was held for the fall festivals in 2013.) But then again, Joel (and Ethan) Coen's No Country For Old Men blanked at Cannes and did just fine. My guess is that this will play Cannes unless the higher-ups at Apple decide to hold off until Venice/Toronto. But since Cannes is so late this year, I feel like the festivals will flow into each other a little differently this year.
Apichatpong Weeerasethakul's English-language debut, Memoria, starring Tilda Swinton, was shot in 2019, so it should be ready to go.
Nanni Moretti has completed his next film, called Three Floors, which appears to be either an anthology of three stories set in the same apartment building, or an ensemble piece. Most of his fiction features have made the competition lineup.
Jacques Audiard also has a feature in some stage of post-production, called Paris, 13th District, which is in black-and-white, and co-written with Celine Sciamma. The plot sounds a lot more like a Philippe Garrel film than Audiard, so this may be a departure of sorts for Audiard.
I've seen speculation that Jane Campion's The Power of the Dog is a possibility, which would suggest that Cannes and Netflix have settled their issues, because Netflix has worldwide rights to this. Maybe Netflix has committed to an exclusive theatrical window in France or something, or maybe the film has worked with a theatrical distributor in France? Or perhaps it is out competition only? It supposedly has a Venice spot lined up if Cannes doesn't work out.
Ruben Ostlund has a new movie, Triangle of Sadness, featuring Woody Harrelson as a the captain of a cruise ship that sinks or something. I'm guessing Ostlund has a Point to make.
I don't think any movie in my years of following Cannes has got as hostile a reception as Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo. Plenty of movies get bad receptions, but this was on a different level. It has to be one of the only movies to not be shown anywhere commercially after its Cannes premiere. It had a French distributor (a prerequisite for Cannes competition) but they never released it. Everywhere else, it either never got distribution, or the distributors have sat on it for the past two years. Reportedly, part of the reason it hasn't been shown since Cannes is because Abdellatif Kechiche wanted to recut the film, but his production company is tied up in some type of litigation (possibly related to the lead actress and how she was treated by Kechiche), but any movie that gets a reception like that is going to be DOA commercially. At any rate, the unasked-for sequel, Mektoub: Canto Duo, which I'm guessing was filmed simultaneously with the second film, is reportedly complete, although due to the ongoing litigation, it may be unable to be released right now. I suspect Cannes would give it a slot, just to show they are Above It All (they gave Intermezzo a slot after Kechiche auctioned off his Palme), but they may not be able to.
The Regulars
Less a Cannes regular than a regular of any film festival, Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch is the most high-profile serious film that has been impacted by the pandemic. There was speculation (probably unfounded) that Anderson could've pushed post-production on this in time for the 2019 Oscar season but that he wanted to hold off on a festival premiere. He had a spot for this at Cannes last year, and could've taken it to Venice or Berlin in anticipation of an Oscar push this year if he (and Searchlight) had been so inclined. (I wonder, given how this year shook out, with an every-different-direction split of awards, how it would've performed.) But they held out, no doubt anticipating a big Cannes premiere at a non-virtual festival, so there's no question that it will be in the lineup.
Arnaud Depleschin has had films at Cannes going all the way back to 1992, but two of his more recent films were sidelined out of competition and in Director's Fortnight, so it's possible his latest, an adaptation of Philip Roth's Deception doesn't make the main lineup
Park Chan-wook has a new film, Decision to Leave, that should be ready to go. I doubt he ever has the kind of breakthrough that Bong Joon-ho experienced a few years ago, but he's always going to get a lot of notice.
I guess you can be a regular if two of your four features have played at Cannes in competition, right? Sean Penn has a movie called Flag Day, which honestly sounds like it could be a Liam Neeson January release based on the plot, but unless The Last Face really killed his reputation at Cannes, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see him in the lineup.
Asghar Farhadi has premiered his three post-A Separation films at Cannes, and has a new one called A Hero ready to go. No plot details have been released although it was filmed in Iran, and already has distribution via Amazon.
Hong Sang-Soo has--surprise surprise--completed another movie after debuting one at Berlin just a few months back. He has been in competition several times, but he has also been in Un Certain Regard several times as well, so showing up in either spot would be expected.
Leos Carax has actually not made that many movies but his last two features were in competition at Cannes so I'm guessing Annette, his Adam Driver/Marion Cotillard musical that some people are thinking is an Oscar contender (lol) is going to be there as well, as long as it's finished. (It has a July 6 release date in France, so I'm guessing it is finished.) One piece I read suggested it will be an opening night film, which is sometimes a competition film, but sometimes not.
Francois Ozon is a bit like Wes Anderson, but more prolific, in that he doesn't just do Cannes--he'll take a movie to any festival. Just two years ago he was at Berlin with By the Grace of God (his best film, in my opinion), and then just before that he was in competition at Cannes with one of those sex thrillers he tends to make every third movie. This year he has a movie called Everything Went Fine, with a pretty starry cast, that is apparently about euthanasia.
Stephane Brize's films haven't gotten much attention in the US, but he's had two films in competition in recent years, and he has a new one this year, called Another World, although IMDb doesn't even have a listing for it yet.
The Not-Quite Regulars, but Some of Them Will Probably Be There
Paul Verhoeven has only had two movies in competition at Cannes, but he's become a pet favorite of the auteurist crowd lately, and the backlash that he's probably going to get about his behavior towards Sharon Stone on Basic Instinct (not exactly a secret, but attitudes have shifted) will probably not matter in a world where Roman Polanski still gets (or until 2019, got) major competition berths at any film festival he submits his films to, so I would expect to see Benedetta in the lineup.
Xavier Giannoli has a de Balzac adaptation, Lost Innocents completed, although its French release date might suggest a Venice, rather than Cannes, debut.
Hard to call Ari Folman a regular with only two previous films (I honestly forgot he directed The Congress), but Waltz With Bashir made a splash in 2008, and he's got Where Is Anne Frank?, which is expected to be at this year's festival. It's the first film made with the cooperation of the Anne Frank Foundation, which gave Folman exclusive access that other filmmakers telling this story didn't have. It's takes on a unique perspective: That of Kitty, who Anne's diary is addressed to, who wakes up in modern Amsterdam and embarks on a journey to find Anne, who she believes is still alive.
Alain Guiraudie has only had one film in competition, Staying Vertical, but word was Stranger By the Lake was pushed out of competition at the last minute (some claimed this was because the explicit sex would offend Spielberg, but I never bought that). At any rate his new film (reportedly a comedy) is expected to be at Cannes.
There is often a Russian film in competition, and Kirill Serebrennikov's film, Petrov's Flu is widely expected to be the one. Lots of people seem to be expecting Julie Ducournau's film Titane, which already has a distribution deal in the US with Neon, to be in the competition as well, which would be a jump for her, after [I}Raw[/I] was in a sidebar a few years ago.
Others
When you win the top prize at another big festival, you tend to get on the Cannes radar, so Nadav Lapid, who just won Berlin a couple of years back with Synonyms (I hated that movie) will probably have a good shot at making his first competition lineup at Cannes with his follow-up, Ahed's Knee.
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi made the acclaimed five-hour Happy Hour a few years back and was in competition with Asako I & II a year or two after that, and is widely expected to have a competition spot with his next film, Drive My Car.
Emanuelle Bercot has never actually directed a film that has played in competition, although she has written one that played in competition, and has starred in several competition films (and won Best Actress not that long ago). This year she has a new film, De Son Vivant, starring Benoit Magimel, Catherine Deneuve, and Cecile de France, that I would expect to see in competition.
Mia Hansen-Love has never been in competition at Cannes but I suspect there will be a conscious effort to include more female directors so I wouldn't surprised to see her show up with Bergman Island, her English-language debut, which feels like it has been coming soon forever, probably because half of the movie was shot in 2018 and the other half was shot in 2019, and then the pandemic most likely pushed its premiere back. It was reportedly submitted for Venice last year and not accepted, though.
It seems unclear whether or not Paul Thomas Anderson's Soggy Bottom (which may undergo a name change) will be finished in time for Cannes, although the festival organizers reportedly would like to have it, and Anderson reportedly is willing to try to finish editing in time. But with a late fall release date, the distributor probably has a fall festival in mind. (Remember Phantom Thread skipped festivals altogether.)
Paul Schrader has actually been in competition twice, both in the 80's, and could be again with The Card Counter, which is almost surely finished. The release date (mid September) could be more in line with a Venice/Toronto premiere, and doesn't exactly inspire confidence, since that is a dumping ground, but this will get him more benefit of the doubt than anything he's done in quite awhile.
The Green Knight has been completed forever and has its international release a few weeks after Cannes. I would expect an out-of-competition screening, if it shows up at all.
Whether they're finished or not, I wouldn't expect Blonde, The Hand of God (Paolo Sorrentino's next film) or Apollo 10 1/2 to show up in competition since they are all Netflix films.